Criminals From Birth

Today we traveled to chharana (forgive my spelling) —  A place located in East Ahmedabad that housed a group of people who were a denotarized tribe or in other words a criminal tribe. As soon as we arrived I felt this overwhelming sadness in my heart. The place was very different then the other places we had been to. There was a lot of trash everywhere and the houses looked miserable. As we walked through the community, there was a lot of barriers with Barbwire to split the communities and trash everywhere. Our guide told us that the people here live by the hundreds and single rooms and have to sleep on top of each other.

The reason that they’re forced to live in these horrible conditions dates back all the way to colonial rule by the British. Because of their knowledge of the land and jungle the British decided to make these a criminal tribe so that they could take the power away from them and force them into submission. The sad thing is even though the British had left the Indian government continue to force people into this horrible life style. Today they still live in horrible conditions and the police brutality is. Unbearably high backed by a corrupt government systems.

A group of local actors who formed a town library continue to try and fight for their rights they are performing straight place and telling about their story I felt this was extremely inspiring and brave. It made me want to do more for my community even though I can’t do anything for this one. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a traveling doctor and have been contemplating the idea for a while now. But after seeing the conditions which humans are forced to live in today through the slight glance of their life that I was granted, I now know that it is indeed what I want to do.

I will however not leave you on a sad note one thing I did notice while I was here is that even though people are forced to live in these conditions there was many many smiles on peoples faces and they seem to be quite joyful. This made me think that we could take a lesson out of their book and be more grateful for what we have and try to look at life through a better perspective. Materialistic possessions are not what truly make us happy. I wasn’t entirely sure when would be an appropriate time to take a picture so unfortunately I don’t have one of the community itself though I do have one of us learning together.

This picture is us in our circle reviewing the day and thinking about how we can apply what we’ve learned to help us in our personal communities in our respective countries.